Alice Alldredge facts for kids

Alice Louise Alldredge, born on February 1, 1949, is an American scientist who studies the ocean. She is an oceanographer and biologist who looks closely at tiny things in the sea like marine snow, how carbon moves through the ocean, and small living things called microbes and plankton. Her work helps us understand how the ocean's environment works. She has been a very important and often-quoted scientist since 2003.

Growing Up and Learning

Alice Alldredge was born in 1949 in Denver, Colorado, USA. She finished high school at Merrit Hutton High School in Thornton, Colorado. In 1971, she earned her first college degree in biology from Carleton College. Both her father and mother inspired her love for science and showed her what was possible.

Her Amazing Career

Alice Alldredge continued her studies and earned her PhD in 1975 from the University of California, Davis. After that, she spent a year studying at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. In 1976, she joined the team at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since then, she has been doing important research about ocean life.

Exploring the Ocean

Dr. Alldredge has done research in many places. She has worked in the open ocean, in her lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and with other scientists at the Mo'orea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research Site (MCR LTER). This site is in Mo'orea, French Polynesia.

Discoveries in the Deep

Dr. Alldredge made some exciting discoveries. She found many tiny, clear gel particles called Transparent Exopolymer Particles (TEP). She also studied small creatures called demersal zooplankton. She learned how these creatures move and spread out in places like coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and tidal sandflats.

She is a top expert on marine snow. This "snow" is made of tiny bits of dead plants and animals that fall to the bottom of the ocean. Her work changed how we understand how these particles move. She was the first to measure how fast marine snow sinks. She showed that it sinks quickly enough to carry a lot of important carbon to the deep sea. Dr. Alldredge also found that tiny creatures called copepods eat the abandoned homes of other small animals in the ocean. This was a big discovery about the ocean's food web.

Research and Teaching

Besides teaching and doing research at UC-Santa Barbara, Dr. Alldredge works at the Mo'orea Coral Reef. There, she studies how ocean currents affect water around the island. Scientists there look at how zooplankton and fish impact the reef. They also compare the water over the reef to water farther out in the ocean. Dr. Alldredge's work has helped UC-Santa Barbara become known as one of the best universities for science around the world. She is one of the most highly-cited researchers, meaning many other scientists use her work in their own studies. She has been in the top 0.1% of highly cited researchers since 2003.

In 2004, Dr. Alldredge became the head of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at UC-Santa Barbara.

Awards and Special Honors

Dr. Alldredge has received many awards for her important work:

• In 1990, she became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• In 1992, she won the Henry Bryant Bigelow Medal from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
• In 1995, she was given the first special teaching position for UC-Santa Barbara's graduate program in Marine Science. She held this position until 2004.
• In 1996, she received a Distinguished Teaching Award for Sciences from UC-Santa Barbara.
• In 1998, she was chosen as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
• In 2008, she received the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.
• In 2011, she received the Alumni Association Distinguished Achievement Award from Carleton College.

Personal Life

Alice Alldredge has three children with her husband, James M. King. She has shared that she is thankful for being able to balance her family life with her studies and research. Dr. Alldredge and her family live in Goleta, California. She is also a leader in a Buddhist meditation group in the Santa Barbara area.

See also

In Spanish: Alice Alldredge para niños